We are now over the hump. Week 6 is in the books and many of you are still going strong! At this point if you haven’t seen huge successes, you need to reassess your daily intake and the intensity of your workouts. The following articles will assist you in reaching your goals!

Sloppy Joes are quick and easy to make, get kids to the table for a fun dinner and can be a great way to incorporate a healthy boost of vegetables into your day!

A lot of us still use, or grow up on the canned Sloppy Joe mix – get rid of that stuff! This is easy and all natural . You get the sweet, tangy, rich flavor of the traditional sloppy burger – naturally.

For the bun, this is another place where you can ruin a perfectly healthy meal. Instead of a white bun, try something a little different. Whole grain pita, homemade biscuits – recipe below for easy and quick Whole Grain Beer Batter Biscuits, toasted spelt bread – all make better alternatives for the highly processed traditional buns.

Pack as many vegetables as you can into this recipe! Chop up some fresh spinach in the food processor, grate your vegetables very small….sneak it in where you can!

Want to switch it up? I will include variations to make Sloppy Jose’s and Sloppy Guiseppe’s! Yum!

Fresh ground black pepper to taste
Heat a large skillet over high heat. When hot, add your oil and swirl around the pan. Add the meat and vegetables. Stir often, allowing all moisture to evaporate and the ingredients to brown. While the meat is cooking mix together your sauce mix – the tomato sauce, honey, lemon juice, mustard, paprika, salt and pepper. Once the meat mixture is brown add your sauce. Keep the heat up and let the sauce and meat simmer together and allowing the sauce to get rich and thick. Take off the heat when you have the rich consistency you want – sloppy but not too sloppy!

Serve with the bun of your choice. Enjoy!
To make Sloppy Jose’s: Reduce the tomato sauce to 1 cup. Add one cup salsa and instead of paprika add 1 tsp cumin and 2 tsp dried ground chili powder. Serve with sour cream and some cheese!

Leftover mix? Wrap up in a tortilla for lunch, make a fabulous omelet or eat as-is with a salad!

Whole grain beer batter biscuits

Makes 12 biscuits

3 cups whole grain flour

1 tsp salt

1 Tb baking powder

1 Tb organic raw sugar

12 oz beer of your choice

Mix the dry ingredients together – add the beer and mix until everything is just incorporated. Spray a muffin tin with pan spray, divide the batter between the cups. Bake at 425 for 20-25 minutes until the top is nice and brown. Serve and enjoy!
Go to www.mesadevida.com and www.facebook.com/mesadevida for more healthified recipes.

Do you know what is in your food? Do you take the time to read the nutritional label? Learn how to here. You will be surprised as to how many “additives” are added to your food. Weightloss.org has put together a fun visual showing some of these chemical additives. We hope you enjoy it, and we hope you start to pay more attention to your nutritional labels.

Taste, texture, color, and freshness all play roles in the enjoyment of our food as well as in weight loss. These are the qualities that make eating a pursuit that goes well beyond simple nourishment. Our modern lifestyles have given rise to high food production, mouths to feed, and a greater demand for shelf-life. This, in turn, has given rise to food additives, which give us exactly what we want out of our food, but at what cost?

Pat yourself on the back; you have made it to the halfway point! By now the cravings are starting to fade away and the inches are starting to shed. Let us know your successes and difficulties. Here are a few articles that you should read in order to expand your health and wellness knowledge and help you WIN this challenge:

Doctors, dieticians, trainers, and nutritionists have all been known to prescribe diet soda as an alternative to regular soda. It has fewer calories, contains no sugar, and often has a comparable great taste. So what’s the problem with diet soda? It sounds like a very healthy alternative; well think again. Not only has there been years of research touting the dangers of diet soda, new research also suggests some other hidden dangers.

It’s Diet, Have All You Want

Everything in moderation is a mantra that many people live by. For some reason, this gets thrown out the door with diet soda. Many people seem to believe that because it contains 0-5 calories, it can be consumed limitlessly. A decade long study by doctors at the University of Texas – San Antonio presented in 2011 showed that diet soda drinkers experienced 70 percent greater increases in waist circumference compared with non-users. The study performed on subjects in the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging also showed that people, who considered themselves frequent users, consuming 2 or more diet sodas a day, increased their waistline by over 500 percent compared to non-users. Calories add up. Read more of this remarkable article

The goal for Get-Fit-Naturally is to help people learn how to achieve a healthy balanced lifestyle through nutrition and physical fitness. It isn’t about losing weight looking great; it’s about losing weight to reduce your risk of health problems and diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and even cancers. It’s about having energy to play with your children and to participate in activities that you love.

At Get-Fit-Naturally, we want to help you to be healthier. Our topics include up to date, scientifically researched, information on the foods you need to be eating to achieve and maintain good health. We also cover how to incorporate physical fitness into your daily life, no matter how busy you are or whether or not you have a gym membership.

Learn how to define your goals, choose powerful health-boosting foods, and squeeze in exercise into your daily life. Visit us today!

Get-Fit-Naturally was chosen as our fan page spotlight because of their continuing dedication to helping their fans get fit conveniently. Lori posts workouts that can be squeezed into any part of your day and sayings that motivate you to get up and go. Lori is a frequent contributor to other blogs and fan pages as well. We strongly recommend her site to our fans!

What do you think of our Fan Page Spotlight? If you know a great page that deserves a spotlight, please let us know about it.

Back in December of 1960 President-Elect John F. Kennedy wrote an article for Sports Illustrated called The Soft American. In this article he references a research study that was conducted by Dr. Hans Kraus and Dr. Sonja Weber (Kraus Weber Test), in which they tested the physical strength and ability of American youth compared to that of Europeans.

The test was made up of six parts. Here they are:

Test No. 1. With his feet held on the ground by the examiner, the subject lies flat on his back with his hands behind the neck. Perform one sit-up.

Test No. 2. The subject is in the same position except that his knees are bent with his ankles close to the buttocks. Perform one sit-up.

Test No. 3. The subject lies flat on his back with his hands behind his neck. The legs are straight and lifted 10 inches off the floor. Hold this position for 10 seconds.

Test No. 4. The subject lies on his stomach with a pillow under his lower abdomen and groin. The examiner holds his feet down. Lift head, shoulders, and chest off the floor and hold for 10 seconds.

Test No. 5. The subject’s position is the same, but the examiner holds the chest down. With knees straight, lift legs off floor and hold for 10 seconds.

Test No. 6. The subject stands erect, barefooted, and with feet together. The examiner holds the knees straight. Bend over slowly and touch the floor with the fingertips. Hold this position for 3 seconds

The results are astonishing. Nearly 60% of American children failed one or more of these test, whereas only about 9% of European children failed.

In his article, John F. Kennedy talks extensively about the importance of fitness for our youth and our nation. I would like to share the final paragraph with you:

All of us must consider our own responsibilities for the physical vigor of our children and of the young men and women of our community. We do not want our children to become a generation of spectators. Rather, we want each of them to be a participant in the vigorous life.

What do you think? Have things changed? Are we a generation of spectators? Could your child or children you know pass the Kraus Weber Test listed above? Have the advancements in all forms of media pushed our children from their playgrounds and fields back onto their couches? (If so, try these steps.) What are you doing to ensure our Nation’s next generation is not considered “SOFT!?”

Wow… Congratulations! You have completed 4 weeks of pushups and sit ups, eating 7 servings of fruits and vegetables, drinking 8 glasses of water, and exercising for 30 minutes each day. Let’s not forget that you have also gone over 25 days without those cookies, candies, alcohols, cigarettes, or other vices. You should be very proud. We are sure you have lots of successes to report. It should be getting easier now but if you are still having problems squeezing your workouts in, here is a great article about overcoming a busy schedule.

One of our fans, Briana Starks, had a very common question; how can I possibly squeeze a workout into a very busy schedule? Briana has 3 kids under the age of 4, is a full time student, and spends her nights studying and doing homework after putting the kids to bed. Briana has an issue that is not unfamiliar to many people trying to make their health a priority. Here’s some suggestions we have come up with. Please leave suggestions on how you have been able to squeeze workouts into your busy schedule as well.

Try Involving the Kids

Today’s video games offer many interactive family games. Pop in a dance game or workout video and try to get all the kids involved for 10 minutes. Don’t have a dance game? Just play a few of your favorite songs and have a dance party. Don’t like dancing? Take the kids for a walk. Race them for 10 second intervals. Every 5 minutes, stop and do jumping jacks, squat jumps, squats, jump rope, and or high knee running in place. You can also use the kids as weights and lift them up and down. Playgrounds are fun areas with all types of fitness machines. Hang or do pull-ups on the monkey bars. Play tag on the jungle gym. You can even make an obstacle course for both you and the kids to enjoy. Be creative and the opportunities are endless.

Don’t Start Big

Always remember that something is better than nothing. If on Monday you can only find 5 minutes to workout, get in a five minute workout. If you can only find 5 minutes per day for weeks, that is 35 minutes of working out a week. Compare that to zero minutes per week if you just decide to give up. Instead of trying to wake up 30 minutes earlier a day, try 5. Try to increase your amount of time for working out by 10% each week. This means if you work out 5 minutes on week 1, you would work out for 5 minutes and 30 seconds on week 2. The more you increase, the more your workout will become a habit and you will be up to 15-20 minutes per day with ease. Also, try to choose 2 days a week that you know you can get the most time to work out and make those your more intense work out days.

Write a Detailed Schedule

Start recording your day. You might want to do it by the half hour but no less than by the hour. This will be a way to review your days to find a few minutes here and there to piece together a workout routine. Sometimes you might find a few shortcuts that can be taken or a few things that can be cut out in order to make time. I know many people, who after writing out a detailed schedule have found a way to steal 30 minutes a day to work out. Read more of this remarkable article